Patient health information, which normally resides in paper forms or Electronic Health Records (EHRs), is well protected under a number of regulations, including PIPEDA in Canada, HIPAA in the USA, and GDPR in Europe. These regulations exist to safeguard the privacy and security of sensitive information and to ensure that patients feel safe participating in research, without the fear that their personal information will be made public or fall into the wrong hands. This protects individuals’ dignity and benefits society at large.
As a result of advances in medical procedures, the physical spread of medical practitioners, and the increasing amount of data collected on individual patients, storing patient records in a digital format has become increasingly practical. The digitization not only facilitates the aggregation of a plethora of data and notes in one place, but also paves the way for bioinformatics and big data to support clinical research. However, the digitization and sharing of patient data within and between institutions comes with a number of security and privacy concerns, including:
- Unauthorized access to patient information by clinical and research staff or hackers;
- Data being used, traded, or sold without patient consent;
- Maintaining data governance;
- Having IT infrastructure and support to create and maintain secure remote connections;
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Managing large volumes of information and making it accessible to the right people at the right time.
Learn more about Logibec NOAH and how it protects patient privacy with security set as the default mode
